AI search guide
Claude SEO: how businesses get found and recommended by Claude
Updated November 4, 2026
Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant, is used by millions of people for research and decisions, including who to hire. When web search is on, Claude searches the web as it answers, reads what comes back, and cites the pages it relied on. For a local business, that means your visibility in Claude depends on what those searches find.
How Claude answers local questions
Asked "Who's a good roofer in Guelph?", Claude with web search runs one or more searches, reads a selection of the results, and writes an answer with citations. Without web search, it can only draw on what it learned in training, which is often out of date for local businesses. The search step is where you can make a difference.
Found, cited, recommended
There are three separate steps. Your page can be among the results Claude's search finds; the answer can cite it as a source; and Claude can name or recommend your business. They don't always line up. Claude often cites directories and review sites, and can recommend a business it learned about from those sources rather than from the business's own website.
What helps
- Service pages that answer the question directly in plain language: what you do, where, for whom, and what it costs or depends on.
- Clear location information on your site, so a search for a service in a town matches you.
- Accurate, detailed profiles on the directories and review sites that tend to be cited in your area.
- Plenty of genuine, recent reviews that describe the work.
- Crawlable pages: don't block reputable AI crawlers in robots.txt or your firewall unless you mean to.
Measure it properly
Asking Claude once on your own account isn't a measurement. Answers vary by wording and location. Track the questions your customers actually ask, from your location, on a schedule, and record which pages were found and cited and whether you were named. SearchTerrain does this for Claude alongside ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Mode.
Questions
Does Claude search the web?
Yes, when web search is enabled. It then cites the sources it used in its answer.
How is Claude SEO different from Google SEO?
Much of it overlaps: clear, useful pages and a strong reputation help both. The difference is that Claude picks a few sources to cite and summarizes, so being one of those sources, or being named by them, matters more than a position number.
Can I pay to be recommended by Claude?
No. Claude's answers aren't paid placements. You influence them through the content and reputation the web shows about you.
How do I know if Claude recommends me?
Track your customers' questions on a schedule, from your area, and record the outcome each time. One-off checks are too variable to rely on.
SearchTerrain
Track it every week, not once
SearchTerrain checks where you rank on Google Maps across your service area, in search results and in AI answers, then tells you what to work on next. Plans from $99 a month. Free for the first 7 days.